I've decided to begin reading some low-level manga now that I'm an honorary intermediate learner.

This manga is all about a small girl who goes all over the place and everyone that runs into her calls her cute. However, instead of "かわいい”、 this time the person she ran into said 「かわつた子」.

now, based on how similar it looks to かわいい、 and how that would follow the pattern of what's been said in the manga up until now, I'm guessing it is some sort of variant of that meaning? But what IS it, exactly? Is it one word? Three words? A verb (before 子）？ A grammar point? For whatever reason I'm doing SOMETHING wrong, as I haven't been able to gage the meaning from any dictionary...